


how's your halo?

by redskieskath



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Boys In Love, M/M, for blue skies by strays don't sleep is the best song ever written, i just. got high and inspired
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:55:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21997849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redskieskath/pseuds/redskieskath
Summary: all titles from "for blue skies" by strays don't sleep. go listen to the song.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Kudos: 3





	how's your halo?

Richie was standing on the edge of the roof, cigarette in hand and eyes a million miles away. He was perched, tall and looming over the alleyway seven stories below, but his mind seemed so far away. He was beautiful and bird-like in the sky like that, but no one would've seen him from the ground. His parents were far away, in a house miles to the south and so closed off from their son that they couldn't see him when they were staring right at him. His other friends were in their own houses, too, separate, distant, alone. Not by choice, no, but by necessity, as life caught up with each of them.

Bev, his dear Bev, struggling to make ends meet and keep her aunt afloat and, once again, carry her own life is her too-young hands. 

Stan, drowning under his parents’ expectations and his own ambitions, too smart to give himself time to think yet too stupid to understand that time to think was exactly what he needed. 

Ben, isolated once more from his open and painful Bev-shaped wound and his ever-present fear that he was the least of them. 

Mike, kind and gentle as always, too kind to give up on them but too gentle for the rough-and-tumble coping that felt more like rug burn than healing.

BIll, his best friend, his brother, still crumbling on the inside from something that would never heal, broken and in pain and sharp around the edges. 

One friend, though, felt real and right and good still, even after everything. Though his parents and the others were too far away for his thoughts to reach, maybe his mind was in the bedroom downstairs. In one of only three rooms in the apartment, and definitely the only hospitable one, was Eddie Kaspbrak— probably sleeping, probably lovely, and probably Richie’s biggest problem and best blessing to date. 

***

Eddie’s apartment was a new endeavor, but one very predictable for the last three years. Eddie had grown up, gotten a job, become a teenager, but his house had stayed the  _ exact _ same. It hadn’t shifted a second, but with every passing minute, money was flowing out of the bank. Money, leftover as a last paternal gift, had been wasted like water through all of Eddie’s childhood, on every whim and stupid whit Sonia could find. The house had been theirs for Eddie’s whole life, but the mortgage wasn’t quite paid off. If Eddie had known, he would’ve been proactive, set something up with the bank,  _ anything _ to not have to worry about this. 

But his mother hadn’t told him because she hadn’t told anyone and now they were foreclosed. They were being evicted like a snap, like insanity. Nobody was prepared for what was happening, but Eddie freaked out and called everyone he knew, and Stan and Bev helped him scour the paper for an apartment, and Mike offered up his truck for transport, and Richie and Bill both helped Eddie cull what he could from their possessions and move whatever they could to either the new place or an old storage unit that Ben had volunteered. 

They’d handled it and found an apartment that his mom could afford with her monthly welfare checks and her allowance from his dad’s life insurance. He’d learned that he needed to take control if anything was going to get better, and it had sort of started to work. Now, Eddie had an apartment and Richie stayed over half the time and no one could say anything about it because he’d handled everything himself. 

And, his mom could still get the made-for-TV frying pans. 

Life had kicked them all in the ass lately though, and he knew these were difficult times, and he knew they were getting older, but he wanted to pretend that they weren’t. He wanted to pretend that his best friends, the people he’d known and loved since childhood, the people he’d gone through his deepest trauma and best days with, weren’t those same seven kids that he barely talked to once a week, barely understood or connected or supported anymore. 

They weren’t. 

If he needed his best friends, they’d come along right away, because they were the people who’d helped him buy a place and move within 53 hours of being told it was happening. They wouldn’t ignore his phone call for the third time this week. If he needed his best friends, they’d be with him just like Richie had for all these bad nights. 

Even if his best friends wouldn’t answer, Eddie couldn’t imagine anything without Richie by his side. 


End file.
